Alone Island
First published. April 12, 2017
Adriana was restless. Restless as a warm snake, looking for the kind of love she didn’t realize she didn’t actually want, restless for the life she was certain she had missed. She felt as though she had been in a holding pen all her young life and she wasn’t going to live another year in prison— she knew what she had to do. She switched on the searchlights, looking for tortured souls crossing the deserted night, souls like her, looking for confident sweet-talking men who’d tell her what she wanted to hear, who would hold her in their arms, who would make her feel special and needed, if only for a little while. As long as they had the musk scent of acceptance and security she would let them hustle her heart and cloud her judgment. When you need love you’ll do anything to get it. Emotional addict. Sex junkie. As long as you’re high, life is bearable.
One after another, stalking heroes crossed into her headlights and, drawn to her for reasons they neither understood nor cared to understand, they put on their boots and ran headlong toward her, straight into her waiting arms. One after the other they struck like dry lightning, bringing her peace and quick sizzling light, happy horizons in the middle of an endless, lonesome plain. She fell for each and every one of them, and they fell for her. She said, “I don’t need anybody but you” to every one of them, and promised to love each of them in return.
Eventually, though, she would grow restless yet again. She would crave adventure and happiness and say, “Take me across the ocean. Somewhere where pain and sadness can’t find me.” So each of her suitors— her “close someones” —would carry her safely to the shore, and with a solemn, romantic oath on their lips and fear in their hearts, they would pledge themselves to someday share marriage and fortune with her. Someday. But not today. And she believed them.
But as will happen with heroes, their best was never good enough. She said, “If you don’t love me enough to marry me, then I’ll have to carry on alone.” Which she never could really do because she was scared and insecure, though she was an actress at heart and hid it well.
And cried. A lot. Often.
One day, she built a boat for one and set sail for the horizon, happy to be on her own and not dependent upon anyone anymore. Ah, freedom! To get on with my life, she exulted. Toward what? She didn’t know, but that didn’t matter. What made a difference was not needing anyone.
She sailed and sailed. For years she sailed, until one dawn she came upon an island. Like a skilled mariner, she negotiated the rocks and waves and shoals and landed on the shore of her new-found paradise, thrilled that she had discovered a place she could finally call her own. A place she wouldn’t have to share with anyone. A new beginning to the life she sensed she had missed when she was young. Immediately, she set up living under cover from the sun, found a clear blue inlet, a pure, crystal waterfall, and sources for everything she would need to spend the rest of her idyllic life alone— the way it was meant to be. The reason she had set sail in the first place.
Weeks and months went by, and she was happy; glad to be living the life she had always wanted, wiling away her days in lazy warm repose, daydreaming and content, and sleeping the sleep of the dead at night. As time passed, though, she began to notice that as she went about gathering food in the jungle and bathing in the cool refreshing lagoon, she had begun to carry on conversations with herself. It wasn’t for lack of company, she insisted. It was because her own company was better than anyone else’s. Who better to speak for me? Who better to listen to than me? But there was this:
This island— Alone Island, she had named it —was so beautiful, so perfect, that she simply had to share her good fortune with the friends and lovers back on the mainland she had left behind. “Maybe if they knew that there really is such a paradise as Alone Island, they would be as happy as I am,” she said aloud. Determined to share her enlightenment and good fortune, she set sail in her little boat back to the mainland to tell everyone what she had found. To invite them to come see for themselves.
Great crowds of her friends gathered around her when she arrived back on the mainland, back where she had begun her self-quest. They were eager to hear about her adventures— the prodigal girl had returned to the sanctuary of home. “I have found it!” she declared. “You can have what I have!”
“What?” they wanted to know. “What have you found?”
“Why, Alone Island!” she cried. “That pure and wonderful place we all seek. Come! Follow me!”
So they did. Friends, family, and all those heroes she knew would never desert her built boats of their own and set sail for her island in the sun. Everyone was excited, but none more so than Adriana. She couldn’t wait to show the world just how special, how spectacularly fulfilling, Alone Island was.
After a week of sailing the high wide ocean, everyone landed on the beach of Alone Island. “Here we are!” Adriana shouted, as all the others leapt out of their boats and scrambled up the beach toward the lush, verdant jungle of Adriana’s wonderful Eden. In a month a village had grown around her private little cove. No longer was she alone. Like her, now her friends, family, and heroes were enlightened and wonderfully, blissfully content.
One night Adriana met a man who had come along, though she didn’t know him. Scruffy, not the kind of man she would have been drawn to if she hadn’t been so desperate to escape all the madness of the crowd, she was attracted to him for reasons she did not understand. Like Love, he just appeared. And that was all she wanted, really. Maybe it was all she needed. She invited herself to spend the night in his thatched hut. “I need someplace quiet," she pleaded. "Won't you give me shelter from the crowd?”
“Sure,” he said. “I know what it is to be alone and what it is to be crowded out of your own life. Everyone needs time to think, to be alone.”
“Would two of us be the right number of people?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “We might be.”
“And if it turns out one and one make one, will you marry me and take us away from here?” she asked.
“Me? You want to leave Alone Island with me?”
“Yes.”
“Well . . . I don’t see why not. Some company might be nice for a change. Yes. Let’s leave Alone Island.”
So, when the time was right, they got into his boat and slipped out to sea. They sailed and sailed and sailed until they found a new island, even more perfect than Alone Island. They called it Couple Island, and found there everything they could possibly want, just like Adriana had discovered on Alone Island. And how content they were, with life and with each other. Still, after a year, that old itch returned. They felt a loneliness together they had known would come someday, and they did what they had to do to end their loneliness-- what any happy, restless couple would do: they had children. They knew, however, that they would never be as happy as they wanted to be on Couple Island, not with children. It was too small, too close to Alone Island. They needed space, they needed stuff. So they set sail again, in search of . . . of what?
Once more they set off for the setting sun and eventually found the island they were looking for and settled down. This place they called Family Island. But with more mouths to feed, more bodies to keep clean and healthy, more minds to keep occupied, Adriana began to think that what had once been a dream come true had rotted and become a nightmare, an abysmal trap. She was stuck on an island with a man she didn't know and responsibilities she didn't want-- alas, she was far, far away from her friends on Alone Island, and even farther from the mainland. She missed them all. She missed living life.
So Adriana dreamed a new dream. When the time was right, she set sail in the middle of the night and returned to Alone Island. Back where she could be Alone, with all the friends she'd left behind the first time. It was the Way. It was what she wanted. Plenty of alone, but not too much lonely.
Then she was sadder than before. And so she set sail again, looking across the broad wide sea for a new island, a new partner.
She sailed for years. She was not as young now as she used to be. She despaired of ever being truly happy. And then, one dawn, she spied an island in the distance, a lush volcanic island. La isla bonita. This would be her final forever home, lonely though it might be. But when she weighed anchor and went ashore she discovered a man, another sailor already living there. His life was simple, he told her, but he was happy. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said.
“For me?” she seemed astonished.
“For you, yes.”
“How do you know? How long have you been waiting? No, this is impossible!”
She turned and walked back down to the shore, to wade back to her boat.
“Adriana, where are you going?” he cried after her.
“To find happiness. To find my place in the world!”
“But you’ve already found it,” he pleaded. You’ve found it. It’s here!”
“It can’t be!” she called over her shoulder as she hoisted the anchor. “It doesn’t work this way!”
“Adriana!”
But Adriana brought her boat about and sailed for the setting sun as the mysterious man stood looking after her on the shore, alone again. On his own Alone Island.
Adriana watched the island fade in the distance behind her. Soon the stars were out, and she could feel all the expanse of the universe enveloping her, taking her in to its eternal, sorrowful embrace. The moon shone wide and bright. Maybe tomorrow she would find the island she was to supposed to find. Tomorrow.
She was getting sleepy, so she lay down on the deck of her boat with her hands behind her head, half watching the stars and the moon, half dreaming of the life she hadn’t yet found. Then, all at once, the thought came:
“Wait! How did he know my name?!”
